MUSINGS OF A STORY MERCHANT

INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR LARRY D. THOMPSON

How did you start your writing career?I started my writing career as a failure. I started my first novel about ten years ago, finishing it about two years later (still working my day job). Thinking I had written the great American novel, I sent it to agents and publishers and was rejected by all. So, my wife and I promoted it and I finally landed my agent who sold the paperback rights to Tor/Forge. That led to my next two being published by St. Martin’s Press and I was on my way. .

Tell us about a favorite character from a book.

Jackson Douglas Bryant is the protagonist from my last novel. He’s a poor boy who became rich as a plaintiff lawyer and returned to his hometown of Fort Worth and started doing pro bono legal work from his RV parked on North Main in a poor section of town. In Dead Peasants, he must figure out the connection between seemingly random murders throughout North Texas before his love interest is killed. Readers liked him so well that my next story will be about him.

Where do you dream of traveling to and why?

My wife and I want to rent an apartment on the Left Bank iin Paris for six months where I will write a novel. If it was good enough for Hemingway, it should work for me.

Tell us about your current release.

The Insanity Plea is the story of Wayne Little, a young Houston lawyer who must defend his older brother, a schizophrenic street person who is in the wrong place at the wrong time and is accused of a murder he didn’t do. The physical evidence is so overwhelming that the plea must be “Not Guilty by reason of insanity.” Wayne enlists the help of his friend, Duke Romack, former NBA star turned criminal lawyer. When Wayne and Duke review the evidence, they conclude that they either find the real killer or win the plea of insanity. The former may be a mission impossible since the killer is the most brilliant, devious and cruel fictional murderer since Hannibal Lecter. The chances of winning an insanity plea are equally grim. The story combines a legal thriller with tracking a serial killer and takes the reader on one helluva ride, right up to the last page and sentence. .

Tell us about your next release.

It’s in its embryonic stages, but I’m going back to Jack Bryant, the protagonist in Dead Peasants because my readers wanted to read more about him.

Has someone been instrumental in inspiring you as a writer?

Thomas Thompson was my brother who died way too young. But he was a best-selling true crime author in the eighties, best known for Blood and Money and Serpentine.

Who is your favorite author?Other than my brother, it would be Ken Follett.

What was your first sale as an author?

So Help Me God

When in the day/night do you write? How long per day?

I’m a morning writer. I’m still a full time trial lawyer; so, I write a couple of hours in the morning if I’m not in trial and several hours on Saturdays and Sundays.

What is the hardest part of writing your books?

Re-writing and re-writing and re-writing until I am almost sick of my own creation.

Synopsis:A young nurse is savagely killed during a pre-dawn run on Galveston’s seawall. The murderer slices her running shorts from her body as his trophy and tosses the body over the wall to the rocks below. As dawn breaks, a bedraggled street person, wearing four layers of old, tattered clothes, emerges from the end of the jetty, waving his arms and talking to people only he hears. He trips over the body, checks for a pulse and, instead, finds a diamond bracelet which he puts in his pocket. He hurries across the street, heading for breakfast at the Salvation Army two blocks away, leaving his footprints in blood as he goes.

Wayne Little, former Galveston prosecutor and now Houston trial lawyer, learns that his older brother has been charged with capital murder for the killing. At first he refuses to be dragged back into his brother’s life. Once a brilliant lawyer, Dan’s paranoid schizophrenia had captured his mind, estranging everyone including Wayne. Finally giving in to pleas from his mother, Wayne enlists the help of his best friend, Duke Romack, former NBA star turned criminal lawyer. When Wayne and Duke review the evidence, they conclude that Dan’s chances are slim. They either find the killer or win a plea of insanity since the prosecution’s case is air tight. The former may be a mission impossible since the killer is the most brilliant, devious and cruel fictional murderer since Hannibal Lecter. The chances of winning an insanity plea are equally grim.

It will take the combined skills of the two lawyers along with those of Duke’s girlfriend, Claudia, a brilliant appellate lawyer, and Rita Contreras, Wayne’s next door neighbor and computer hacker extraordinaire, to attempt to unravel the mystery of the serial killer before the clock clicks down to a guilty verdict for Dan.

The Insanity Plea is a spell-binding tale of four amateur sleuths who must find, track and trap a serial killer as they prepare for and defend Wayne brother who is trapped in a mind like that of John Nash, Russell Crowe’s character in A Beautiful Mind.

Combining legal thriller with tracking a serial killer, Thompson once again takes the reader on a helluva ride, right up to the last page and sentence.

Larry D. Thompson is a veteran trial lawyer and has drawn on decades of experience in the courtroom to produce riveting legal thrillers. After graduating from the University of Texas School of Law, Thompson founded the Houston trial firm where he still serves as managing partner. The proud father of three grown children, he lives and works in Texas but spends his summers in Colorado, where he crafts his novels and hikes the mountains surrounding Vail. His greatest inspiration came from Thomas Thompson, his brother, who wrote many best-selling true-crime books and novels.

AUTHOR-PRENEURS!

"In today’s unpredictable economic times, the only investment with any appreciable security at all is clearly investing in your own creative career—something you and only you can have control over. As I watch the Dow-Jones rise and fall and see that the projects of so many writing clients moving forward toward their pots of gold at the end of the rainbow, I commend all creative people with the vision to take risks on their own creativity. One thing for sure, the worst things are, the more the world needs stories!" -- Ken Atchity, the Story Merchant

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